Earthquake in VA!

Holy smokes. Sitting at my desk, working away per the usual at 2:00pm on a Tuesday and all of a sudden my entire office started to rumble and vibrate.

My initial reaction was "good LORD those people on the floor above us are running around like maniacs!" Until the rumbling got louder, and the vibrating turned to all out shaking.

I jumped to the door frame and looked into the hall to see every other office doorway being filled with people. People wondering the same thing: "what the HELL was that?"

Naturally working mere miles from our nation's capitol, I immediately panicked that we were under terrorist attack. But the nice gentleman in the doorway across from mine could see the fear on my face and said "I'm from California...THAT was an earthquake." Which he followed up by asking me 15 times "are you ok?" "are you sure you're ok?" "you've never been in an earthquake before?"

Nope. Never experienced it.

I was in a tornado when I was 3 years old. My brother saved my life. Literally. We were in a pop-up trailer when a storm started brewing. My parents ran out of the trailer to secure my dads boat, thinking that maybe the winds might blow it down river. But as they tied up loose ends outside the trailer, they watched as the trailer, with their two babies inside, was grabbed by the tornado, lifted off the ground, and flipped upside down on the wrong side. They had no idea that inside that trailer, my brother had grabbed me and pulled me underneath the dining table and covered me with his entire body, shielding me from any danger. Chokes me up to think about it. Imagine how hard my mom cries every time she has a flashback.

Naturally my first instinct was to call the babysitter and make sure Nick was ok. But our phone lines were jammed. EVERY.SINGLE.PERSON. in Northern VA was calling their loved ones.

Ironically enough I was doing research on the state of our homeland security this morning and found that since 9/11, one of the most failed cornerstones of our homeland security lies in that of technology and cyber security. And in one report that I read, I came across a line that said "students can teach their parents information-age survival skills, such as texting, which may offer the only means to communicate when cellular networks are overloaded (800 text messages consume the same bandwidth as a one-minute call)".

Of course I don't have the babysitters cell number to text her, but I was able to text my parents to make sure they were ok. And to yell in my panicked text message voice "MOM, CAN YOU CALL THE BABYSITTER?!?!"

She assured me Nick was fine. Then she told me that my dad was working out in the yard when it happened, and he didn't feel a thing. Nothing. Amazing.

So I continued to freak out as I couldn't get through the phone lines. But finally I got through, and you know what the babysitter told me?

Nick slept through it. Even napped through her ushering all the kids into the bathroom for safety. And as I talked to her, she said "yes...Nick is STILL sleeping". Bless his little heart.

Turns out it was a 5.9 on the Richter scale. And reached NY, Detroit, NC, Chicago, and GA. But so far I'm not hearing many reports of damage and no casualties. Other than flight delays, it looks like all is good in the 'hood.

Of course this just furthers my theory that the world is ending. Hurricanes, Tsunami's, and everything in between... Mother Nature -- she's ANGRY!